


Branches

by Dolevalan



Category: Sunshine - McKinley
Genre: Gen, Sequel, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:12:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolevalan/pseuds/Dolevalan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sunshine isn't the only one who has a new and disturbing world to navigate after the events of the novel.  Nor is she the only one with secrets in her past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Branches

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Erin_C](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erin_C/gifts).



_“‘Mel,, d’you suppose _anyone_ is exactly who they say they are?’_

_‘Charlie, maybe,’ he answered, after a little pause, of surprise or consideration. ‘Can’t think of anyone else.’”_

 

-  _Sunshine_, Robin McKinley

 

\---

There was someone in the room.

 

Well.  “Someone” was probably over-generous.

 

There was a vampire in the room.

 

I could hear it, though I was the only one breathing.  Or maybe I could just feel it, the tingling on three quarters of a dozen spots on my skin, enough to make me think I heard it.

 

The thing about being in a war, or at least the war I was in, is that you never really stop being in it.  I was alert but motionless for a few of my heartbeats.  I said a silent thanks to whoever was listening that Sunshine had spent the night at her place, and not mine.  And then, the split second before I was about to do something desperate, the thing spoke.

 

“Sunshine is in… some amount of peril.  I was led to believe this fact might concern you.”

 

Of all the threats I’ve ever heard, that had to be the godsdamned strangest.

 

The thing moved a little closer, but at a speed I could see.  That was somehow worse, but I suppose it achieved the object of not aggravating the itch in the hand nearest the stake in my nightstand.

 

Here’s the thing.  I never thought that stake would actually keep me alive.  Vamps are too fast, too silent.  If one gets through your wards, you’re already dead.  But it made me feel better to have it there.  I wanted to go out fighting when I went.  But frankly, I expected this whole thing to go a lot faster.  And him mentioning Sunshine was just…

 

“I fully understand your reluctance to trust one of my kind,” it said, calmly, as if it were a businessman approaching Charlie with an offer to buy out the coffee shop.  As if everything in both of us wasn’t screaming _ENEMY_ at the place where brain met spine.  “I assure you, approaching you for help was her idea, not my own, as I was skeptical you could do any real good.”

 

Then the vampire was by my bedside, which meant the earlier slowness had been deliberate.  My wards seared against my skin at its closeness.  It placed a pocketknife – no, Rae’s pocketknife, I recognized it – on the nightstand.

 

“She thought this might help you,” it said, simply, as if this were more than sufficient explanation of how a damn vampire knowing my girl’s name and holding her favorite knife got in through my wards to babble nonsense at me in the middle of the knight.

 

I knew I wasn’t dreaming.  A small part of me did wonder if I’d gone nuts when my back was turned. 

 

But.  Sunshine in trouble.  If that was genuine, and this thing didn’t kill me, I’d have to take a chance.

 

\---

 

The first time I saw Rae Seddon, I thought I’d found the wrong girl.  She was thin, almost to the point of being skinny, dressed in a neon green t-shirt and jeans under her apron, hair back in a purple scarf.  All of these items were covered in an uneven dusting of flour, in addition to the flour covering her bare arms fully to the elbow, and the motes hanging in the late morning sun streaming through the windows.  She was frowning, but it was a frown of concentration, not anger. 

 

But I could see it.  After a moment, I could see the same expression I’d seen on her father, right before he cast.  The expression of someone completely immersed in their element.  Someone about to do something they knew wouldn’t only be good, but the best.

 

A moment more, and I realized that Onyx Blaise had neglected to tell me how attractive his daughter was.  She looked up, ready to snap at me, but I wasn’t who she was expecting, and she actually smiled a little instead.  “Hey.”  Her voice was unpolished, but nice.  It reminded me of untreated wood, before the sanding and the staining and the varnishing.  “You the new cook?”

 

“Hope so,” I said, genuinely.  I offered a hand.  She took me in, eyes flicking over my build, my clothes, the tattoos exposed on my forearms and the edges you could see under my open-necked shirt.  But her eyes didn’t linger anywhere, and she took my hand without a wince.

 

“Well, if Charlie likes you, you are.  But I hope you know what you’re getting into.”  She smiled, a half smirk.  “You’re not getting coworkers, you’re getting an extended family.”

 

“I try to be ready for anything,” I said, and couldn’t help smiling back a little. 

 

I liked her right away.  I don’t think I loved her, though, until I tried her cranberry muffins.

 

\---

“Please,” the vampire said.  “Pick it up.”

 

I wanted to make a move, but the time still wasn’t right.  It was too close to me for me to risk doing anything but what it said.  My fingers closed over the pocket knife, and I felt a small flair of energy.  Heat. 

 

I’d known something had happened to her pocket knife since that weekend she went missing at the lake, a few years back.  All the mess that followed, she had that knife on her or very nearby.  Sometimes, when she thought I wasn’t looking, she’d finger it in her pocket like a good luck charm.

 

But, as always, I didn’t pry.  Neither of us was much for prying.  She’d have taken it badly, and I was just as happy not to have to lie.  But the last few years might have been different.  Hell.  It didn’t matter now.

 

I let the knife rest in the palm of my hand.  There was a spell on it.  It felt like a ray of sunlight was touching the center of my palm.  And my first conclusion as to its purpose clearly wasn’t true, because it was crazy. 

 

Willingly or otherwise, she’d gotten this vampire through my wards.

 

I’d always known my girl was powerful.  Once, I’d thought she was more powerful than she realized.  Now I wondered if I’d been naïve.

 

“You see,” the vampire said.  It was not a question.  “She sent me to fetch you, though I confess, it might have been quicker if I’d known your name.”

 

I nodded, deceptively slow, but that comment caught my attention.  If she’d kept my name back, the thing didn’t have complete power over her.  She’d still managed to keep some element of choice.

 

Carthaginian hell, but this was bad.

 

\---

 

“Enjoying your book?” I’d once asked her, wryly.  She was sprawled out on the couch next to the picture window, paging through her latest find, something with the words _Immortal Death_ dominating the cover. 

 

Rae glanced up, half guilty, half defying me to laugh.  “Yeah.”

 

I shook my head.  I knew she knew it was trash, but even so. 

 

“Don’t give me that look,” she said, half scolding through a smile.  “I don’t criticize your reading material.  Or wouldn’t.  If I ever saw you reading.”

 

“Ah,” I said, “the hazards of dating an illiterate biker.” 

 

We both had the day off, which was a rarity.  Every now and then Charlie insisted, which I think was Sunshine’s mother’s doing.  She wanted grandchildren, and I was the most likely candidate.  Luckily, Sunshine felt about like I did on the subject, so the forced mini-vacations usually led to hiking by the lake, or long bike trips in the country. 

 

That day, though, I was doing some home improvement, and she was reading.

 

Well, she’d been reading until I bothered her.  Now she was throwing the book at me.  I caught it, thanks to successive tingles on my neck and my left hand.  She looked impressed for a split second before playfully scowling.  Sunshine’s play scowl was more formidable than many people’s real one; I credited her mother, based on personal experience.

 

“Just because you’ve actually fought the things doesn’t mean you have to criticize my hobbies, you know.”

 

I tossed the book back.  “Not criticizing.  Just asking.”

 

She neatly caught it, set it down, then came up and poked me in the chest.  “Asking.”

 

I leaned down to kiss her, which effectively seemed to derail the almost argument.  Just because we didn’t want any kids just then didn’t mean we couldn’t enjoy the day off, after all.

 

\---

 

My fingers closed over the knife, and I wondered what else I had been naïve about.  Her bloodlines, maybe?  How little she knew?  With a vampire sitting just a few feet from me, calmly watching me react, it was even tempting to wonder if everything I’d assumed about her had been wrong.

 

Even bad blood crosses didn’t help vampires.

 

The oak tree on my shoulder ached, but it wasn’t trying to roll me.  It wasn’t doing anything but waiting, inhumanly still.  All my instincts still wanted to try and get a better position.  To slow it down long enough to get to my bike, to get back to a large group of people and some measure of protection.

 

Finally, I said, “Why?”

 

The vampire considered its answer, for a moment.  “I believe, though this is conjecture, that she feels you would be both willing and capable of helping her, under such… circumstances.”  It inclined its head, an almost human gesture.  “I confess, it is uncharted territory for me as well.”

 

With certainty now, I realized I must have gone crazy.  Because it almost sounded like the thing was… worried.

 

It made a broken, disjointed noise I belatedly realized was laughter.  “Then again, the idea of her sending me to a man whose name she will not mention, who turns out to be – ”

 

I cut the thing off, the way I would a drunk who’d wandered into the coffeehouse.  Low, but firm, I said, “You can call me Jack.”

 

“Jack.”  The vampire said the name as if tasting it.  Then it nodded once.  “You may call me… Malcolm.”

 

I dropped the knife as if it was cast iron and fresh from the oven.  “…Malcolm Conner?”  The subtle shift in his expression, even in the room’s darkness, told me the idiotic connection my brain had just made was, somehow, the right one.

 

Shiva _wept._

 

Malcolm Conner, the mystery man they’d found with Sunshine in Old Town.  The man who SOF had never been able to track down since.  The man whose mention, in conversation, made Sunshine’s face pack up shop and hang a “Closed for Business” sign. 

 

I didn’t mention him, typically, for that very reason.

 

I might have, if I’d had the least inkling…

 

Pat said they drove home in the middle of the Carthaginian morning.  All of them.

 

“Jack,” the vampire – Malcolm – said, in a way that let me know he knew it wasn’t really my name, “if you know that name, you must know that Malcolm Conner… whatever else he is… is Miss Seddon’s friend.  That had he wished to harm her, he’d have had ample opportunity to do so.”  He paused, a long moment, then added, “And that she would not have done this were she not utterly desperate.”

 

\---

 

The last time I saw Onyx Blaise, he was wearing his look of fierce concentration.  It wasn’t even near the end of the Wars yet, though I didn’t know that at the time.  I’d been running dispatch for about a year, and had slowly come to believe that the Wars could end the next day, or never, and both were equally likely.

 

I only had one tattoo, then, the hourglass.  It’d seemed apt, at the time.  The thing burned a little, though, whenever I came near Blaise.  Not that I felt I was in danger: not more danger, at least, than I was in constantly, considering.  But time warped a little, near him.  You could feel the power, like heat from an oven, even a kid like me with barely a blip’s worth of talent.

 

He was a tall man, slender but lithe, his power lightly metallic tasting.  It always put me in mind of some kind of weapon.  No tattoos, seldom robes.  Just his own strength of will, and that was more than enough to mark him.  At that moment, he was staring into a small ball of pulsating light, which cast weird shadows everywhere in the tent. 

 

I’d learned better than to interrupt someone working even the most basic magic, so I stood, waiting.  A few minutes later, his shoulders released.  Muttering something, he gestured, the ball collapsing into itself until it was gone.  I blinked, readjusting to the lantern’s glow.  Electricity could get jumpy around sorcerers.  Hell, most people didn’t blame it.

 

He nodded, acknowledging me.  I handed him the dispatch, with a small salute.  He wasn’t technically part of the military, but I found that, much like with a gang, neglecting to show respect to magic users was a stupid and occasionally fatal mistake.

 

“Thank you,” he said, almost absently, reading it over.  I waited, in case he wanted to send a reply.  In the distance, there was the roar of a fire out of control. 

 

He reread it several times, then moved to his makeshift desk.  “You know,” he said, seemingly out of nowhere, “I had a family once.  I don’t even know if they’re still where I left them.”  He laughed, a bit hollow.  “It’ll be midwinter in three days, did you know?”

 

I didn’t.  Couldn’t say midwinter had ever really mattered to me, even before the Wars, but now I’d more or less lost track of the seasons.  But it didn’t seem like the sorcerer expected an answer, and I kept my mouth shut.

 

He looked at me, eyes over-bright in the shadows of the tent.  “The men say you’re a fair cook, boy.”

 

I nodded, after a moment.  “I enjoy mess duty, sir, from time to time.”

 

Blaise chuckled.  “My girl liked feeding people.  Always was helping her mother with rolls or cookies or whathaveyou.”  He wrote a few more lines on his reply, then folded it, sealing it with wax.  We took no chances with electronic communication in those days, at least not with magic involved.  No knowing what sort of things the Others had, tech-wise. 

 

He met my eyes, as I moved to take the offered reply.  “If you live through this, do me a favor.  Look her up sometime.  See if she’s still making cinnamon rolls.”  His lips quirked into what was nearly a smile.  “Don’t mention me.  That’ll earn you no favors.  But it’d be nice, knowing someone’ll keep an eye out.”

 

At the time, though I nodded, I didn’t really have any intention of looking up a stranger, much less taking care of anyone but me.

 

Life’s funny, sometimes.   Death not so much, but what can you do.




 

\---

 

 The vampire was right.  She was desperate, in one way or another.  And whatever else she was… whatever else _I _was… I couldn’t cut and run, if Sunshine wasn’t safe.  I hadn’t been much help to her, a few years ago, and if she thought I could be now, I owed it to her to do what I could.

 

Then again, it could be a trap.  The vampire was watching me, as if he had all the time in the world.  Maybe he did.  But both of us still knew that, wards or no wards, stake or no stake, he could have killed me before now if he’d wanted to.

 

“Well,” I finally said, voice oddly raw to my own ears, but steady.  “Guess we don’t have any more time to waste, then, do we?”

 

He nodded, and I could see something… oddly like relief flicker across his alien features.  “No, we do not.  Come.”  He offered his hand.  The gesture was oddly human, for a vampire.  Not that I’d ever seen one that wasn’t trying to kill me, but even so.  Vampires might have been human once, but they were nothing like now.  Everything in me told me this was a horrible, suicidal idea.

 

Everything but the stubborn part pointing out the knife, the alias, and all the little unanswered questions littering the last few years that I’d been avoiding until now.

 

Sunshine was going to have a hell of a lot of explaining to do, once we had her back safe.

 

I reached up, and took the vampire’s hand.

 


End file.
